Hey all, potential Cantabile owner here, I’m currently working through my 30 day trial.
I’m running Cantabile v2 on my new Surface Pro 4, which has a very high resolution screen (2736x1824), and a pixel pitch very similar to Apple’s “Retina” displays, on a 12" screen. This means that Windows has to be set to a 200% scaling factor for text and windows to be even remotely readable or usable.
Unfortunately, not all applications participate in Windows Scaling, so some applications will end up with tiny text and UI. Cantabile v2 is unfortunately one of those applications.
This is what I get when I run Cantabile v2 on my Surface Pro 4 (keep in mind that this is a screenshot of a 12" screen):
Notice that while the ribbon and general UI elements (including text) appear to be scaling properly, but most of the buttons are tiny. It would be nearly impossible for me to accurately hit any of those icons with my finger or with the pen, and I don’t use a mouse on a live set (not enough room). Kontakt is also not scaling properly within Cantabile. I opened up Kontakt in Standalone mode at the bottom right corner, so you can see how much of a difference it is.
Given that there is a new version of Cantabile coming out soon, I’m not expecting this issue to be fixed in v2. But are these scaling issues a problem in v3? I am very happy with the trial so far, but the only thing keeping me from purchasing it are these window scaling issues.
I think the above image is confirmation enough that Cantabile 3 works on my Surface Pro 4.
Kontakt still doesn’t scale properly, but I can set up all my multi’s in Kontakt’s standalone mode (which does scale) before setting it up in Cantabile.
It took me a little while to get used to the concepts of Racks and Songs, but now that I’ve got the hang of it, it’s really powerful. We’ll see how everything goes on Sunday morning, but I expect it to go smoothly.
I just double checked this here and Kontakt doesn’t scale properly - it does appear at the correct size but only because they’ve not declared themselves HiDPI aware so Windows is scaling it up (and making it look a little blurry). You can get the same effect in Cantabile by turning off “Enable High Resolution UI” in Options → General.
Is there a way to have the Setlist panel fontsize adjustable? When I play live I forgo eyeglasses, for vanity reasons I admit. Having the “LiveMode” be just a full screen with the Setlist in huge text would be extremely helpful to those of us who are vision deficient. I figured out how to get the Setlist to go full-screen (by turning off the other panels) but the text is still a bit too small to read without squinting.
Currently the set list font is only resizeable by changing the entire main window scaling (Options -> General -> Main Window Scaling) - perhaps you can nudge that up enough to make it usable?
Other notes:
If your using one window scaling while editing and another while performing, you might like to create two configs - one for live, one for editing. Not ideal but it’ll save you from having to constantly change the settings.
Can you make do with the ticker bar instead of the full set list. It’s font size is resizeable.
I may at some point provide a better large font full set list display.
Thanks for the clarification Brad. I did bump the global scaling to 250% which is all I can go on my laptop without losing some of the UI elements on the top bar. Please consider backloging a scalable font for the Set list panel. It would be quite handy. I can use the Ticker as a workaround with L/R arrows to scroll, but often our band leader will call a song out of the blue. Having all the songs in a list that I can both see, and directly select as needed is still the best solution.
On that topic, it would be nice to be able to adjust the vertical scaling of the buttons in the Controller Bar. I have the continue button stretched almost all the way across the bottom of the window, but in the middle of a live set it’s still difficult to hit it on my touchscreen. Honestly I’d probably make them half the size of the screen so I can just hit the general area without worrying about hitting something else.
